Chapter Three

A zrael started working his way through the busy store toward his friends—who still hadn’t moved up in line. Slipping through the crowd of people took finesse, but getting in and out of places was Azrael’s specialty.

He was skinnier and shorter than most of the men and women in the crowd so slipping up behind Tyler was an easy move for him.

“What’s going on.” Azrael whispered next to Tyler’s ear. Tyler glanced at him, they were almost the same height.

Then slowly and without turning his head, Tyler swept his eyes to the left.

Azrael casually slanted a look about three checkout lines down and found a man with a scraggly beard wearing baggy clothes.

In the man’s hand was a gun pointed at the cashiers.

Azrael pulled his phone from his pocket and shot Seven a text message that simply said, Send the calvary.

It had been said as a joke during the drive back from the airport and Azrael remembered clearly how the conversation had started.

“What do you do if you get separated from us?” Seven had asked Joshua as he left the airport and guided the passenger van onto the highway—a road that would take them to the nearest Target and from there to the winter lodge they’d rented for the week.

“Stay put?” Joshua said.

“And?” Seven frowned at his brother.

“What?” Joshua squinted at Seven.

“Text me.”

“What if I don’t have my phone?” Ever the smart mouth, Joshua smiled.

“I’ll beat your ass.” Seven smirked.

Joshua laughed. “You’ve never raised a hand to me.”

“What is he supposed to text to you?” Azrael wanted to know.

“Help?” Seven flipped Azrael a quick glance in the rearview mirror.

Azrael scoffed. “Send the calvary?”

“Do you even know what the calvary is?” Kellum teased.

“Erebus, Pegasus, Phoenix, Genesis.” Azrael said with a shrug. “Choose your pick.”

“This area isn’t like California,” Seven warned. “There is a lot of forest out here. The woods are deep and dense. People die out there.”

People die in the woods of California, Azrael had wanted to point out, but he stayed silent, not wanting to get in the middle of the brothers.

After several minutes of going over what measures to take in case of an emergency, plus getting all the teenagers’ agreements on the steps, Seven appeared satisfied and turned the conversation to something lighter.

Azrael looked at the man with the gun. The customer, and he was using that term lightly, had toy guns in packages sitting on the conveyor belt.

But the gun the man pointed at the cashier was very fucking real.

Why people weren’t screaming and running was weird.

Maybe they didn’t want a bullet in the back?

The cashier opened her drawer and slipped money, Azrael assumed, inside of a red and white shopping bag.

Keeping his voice low and almost inaudible, Azrael shot Joshua an annoyed grimace. “No text to your brother? Why haven’t you walked out?”

“At first he was just holding toy gun packages, but he pulled out a real one just a second ago,” Joshua whispered back, pointing a cell phone at him.

The text message sent a few moments earlier simply read help.

“Go, now. Get outside,” Azrael said and without hesitation Joshua took a hold of Travis’s hand and pushed Aaron ahead of him as they started for the door.

Several customers eagerly scooted up in line because that meant they’d get through checkout more quickly.

Fat chance of that, Azrael thought.

“You, too.” Azrael shot a scowl at Tyler.

“I’m not leaving,” the sixteen-year-old offered him a tight smile.

Azrael flipped his eyes to the man with the gun. The guy wasn’t looking around and that was his first mistake. Azrael planned on it being his last.

“Watch my back,” he murmured to Tyler and slipped through the adjacent lines. He was skinny enough to do it, and Tyler was skinny enough to follow him.

He figured since Tyler lived with Link and Eagle, the kid probably knew his stuff inside and out.

But there were always risks.

And that was not his problem. If Tyler didn’t want to listen to him, there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

Azrael hoped that Link and Eagle would see it that way, too.

But he wasn’t going to bet on it.

Right now he had bigger fish to catch or fry or whatever the hell that saying was that Dave often spouted.

The robber had picked the wrong day for a stickup.